There’s never a dull moment on the blockchain. Here’s what you need to know this week:

Bitcoin

$95,970.65



1.00%

Ethereum

$3,343.46



0.92%

Tether

$1.00



0.05%

XRP

$2.21



2.12%

Solana

$183.39



1.36%

Dogecoin

$0.32



1.75%

See the latest prices

MARKET BYTES

Crypto markets whipsaw after Fed chief tees up September interest-rate cut

BTC broke past $65,000 for the first time in about three weeks on Monday, after markets from crypto and gold to stocks and bonds all got a major boost following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s speech during the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. On Friday, Powell said that “the time has come” for interest-rate cuts. 

By Wednesday morning, however, BTC had dropped below the $59,000 range as “leverage driven liquidation” pressured the market, as one analyst explained to CNBC. (Learn more about how leverage can impact markets.)

For more than a year now, the U.S. central bank has held interest rates at two-decade highs in an effort to tame inflation without throwing the world’s largest economy into a recession. But as Powell indicated in his speech, the central bank is widely expected to begin reducing rates in September. 

As interest rates fall, more capital (or “liquidity”) would likely flow into crypto markets, which analysts say should result in rising prices. But even in advance of an actual cut, Powell’s comments preceded a roughly 7% spike for bitcoin at the end of last week.

Here are three market stories to know about this week…

What do analysts think the Fed will do?

The current era of historically high interest rates began in response to the COVID pandemic upending the global economy and sending inflation and consumer prices sharply upward. With inflation now cooling, the Fed can finally begin bringing rates back down. But by how much? And with how many cuts? 

Many economists predict the Fed will begin the easing phase in September with a quarter-percentage-point rate reduction. Although if U.S. jobs data continues to weaken, the central bank might choose to move faster with a bigger cut. 

According to Reuters, “traders moved to price in a better than one-in-three chance that the Fed will start its easing cycle with a half-percentage-point rate cut, and are fully confident of at least one super-sized cut before the end of this year.”

• Ticking down… Reuters also notes that by the end of the year the Fed likely will have cut rates from the current level above 5% to around 3%. Further cuts are expected to come in 2025, but it’s a long way back to the near-zero rates we saw during crypto’s 2020 and 2021 bull run. 

Powell’s speech also revved up crypto ETFs 

Weekly inflows for BTC ETFs last week totalled $543 million, according to analysis from CoinShares. “Interestingly, the majority of those inflows were on Friday, following the dovish comments from Powell, indicating Bitcoin’s sensitivity to interest rate expectations,” wrote CoinShares Head of Research James Butterfill.

Bloomberg data showed that on Friday, the day of the Fed Chair Powell’s comments, BTC ETFs saw $252 million in net inflows, the biggest day in a month. 

• What about ETH ETFs? In their first month of trading, inflows to the new spot ETH ETFs — not including outflows resulting from the transition of Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust into an ETF — have totalled an impressive $2 billion, with BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) tallying more than $1 billion alone.  “We anticipate flows into ETH ETFs will continue to climb once wealth managers and financial advisors complete the education process for what ETH is, its utility, and why they should hold it alongside their BTC ETF,” said ETF Store president Nate Geraci.

Economic activity on Ethereum and Solana slowed in August  

Economic activity on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains both slowed significantly in August, according to data from The Block. 

“The seven-day moving average of daily trading volume on the Ethereum network has declined by around 55% over the past month” reported The Block, and the “total daily transaction fees paid on the Solana blockchain have fallen to a multi-month low.”

• So what’s happening? For ETH, the explanation could be as simple as the annual summer doldrums.  “Historically, ETH spot volumes have tended to drop off by around 16.8% in August over the last five years (compared to the preceding three months),” wrote Duong and Han, “whereas activity this August has come down by a comparably modest 7.7%.” As for Solana? Analysts that spoke to The Block suggested that SOL’s reduced economic activity could be connected to the cooling of the memecoin craze, with CoinGecko data showing that the five biggest Solana-based memecoins are all down over the last month.

STABLECOIN SPOTLIGHT

Stablecoin market hits new all-time high

In 2024, the launch of spot BTC and ETH ETFs, and Wall Street’s increased interest in the space, combined to help push crypto prices to historic highs. Those same forces have now also helped drive the stablecoin market to a new all-time high. 

As traditional financial giants continue to embrace blockchains, stablecoins — crypto tokens that have their value pegged to a reserve currency, most commonly the U.S. dollar — have emerged as an essential link between the two worlds.

Here’s what you need to know. 

What are stablecoins and why are they important?

Stablecoins — such as USDC, PYUSD, and Dai — are a type of cryptocurrency that seeks to maintain a stable value by pegging the market price to an external reference. This reference is most commonly a traditional currency like the U.S. dollar, but could also be a commodity such as gold, or even another financial instrument. 

The primary goal of stablecoins is to provide an alternative to the volatility of cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH. As a result, stablecoins play a crucial role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. They’re widely used for cross-border payments, earning rewards on holdings, and as a key component of digital finance transactions.

Wall Street has accelerated the growth of the stablecoin market

The overall stablecoin market cap is now at an all-time high above $168.5 billion, surpassing the high of $167 billion set in March of 2022. Because stablecoins are used throughout the cryptoeconomy, analysts see this as a sign that investors have growing confidence in crypto markets.

The rising stablecoin market “underscores a broader shift towards [institutions] integrating stable digital assets into both trading strategies and long-term portfolios,” said Rachael Lucas, a crypto analyst of BTCMarkets. 

Since hitting a 2-year low of $120 billion last October, the stablecoin market has steadily grown. USDC, for example, has seen its market cap rise by 44%, to $34.4 billion.  

PayPal’s stablecoin is finding its footing

PayPal’s stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), got off to a slow start after launching last August. Since then, though, PYUSD has soared; it recently surpassed a $1 billion market cap to become the fifth-largest stablecoin on the market, and is becoming increasingly popular on DeFi protocols and with institutions.

Since launching on Solana in May, the token has become popular on lending protocols like Kamino and MarginFi, which have offered rewards as high as 18.5% APY to users who deposit PYUSD to be used for lending. (Around 64% of all PYUSD is now on Solana, reports The Defiant.) 

Last week, institutional crypto platform Anchorage Digital announced a new program that would allow clients to earn rewards on PYUSD held at the bank or in its institutional self-custody wallet. Nathan McCauley, the CEO of Anchorage Digital, told Fortune that the program is aimed at institutional investors who want to hold PYUSD but still take advantage of the high-interest rate environment. 

The state of Wyoming wants to make its own stablecoin

Wyoming, already a leader among states in adopting pro-crypto legislation, is now pushing to release a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin called the Wyoming stable token. Planned to launch early next year, the token’s main purpose would be fast and cheap consumer payments. 

According to Flavia Naves, a commissioner at the Wyoming Stable Token Commission, the token would be over-collateralized and backed by treasury bills, and available via cryptocurrency exchanges as well as public blockchains like Ethereum or Solana.

The token would also have a “public good” element, with reserves invested into low-risk, yield bearing instruments, with the interest used to fund public schools.

The bottom line… 

Many in crypto and on Wall Street see the tokenization of real-world assets — where ownership of things like real estate, art, stocks, or many financial instruments can be represented as a token on a blockchain — as a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. Stablecoins (many of which are, in effect, tokenized dollars) are a key element in this evolution.

And as for Wyoming, the state hopes “to enable other elements to turn into tokens and be on blockchains, whether it is commodities such as gold or oil, whether it is real estate, [or] other governmental obligations,” said Naves of the Wyoming Stable Token Commission.

NUMBERS TO KNOW

$2 billion

Approximate market cap of tokenized Treasury Notes, which are onchain representations of U.S. government bonds that can be traded on various blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar. The market size has doubled since March as major institutions like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are exploring how tokenization can enable 24/7 access to traditional 9-to-5 markets.

$414 million

The amount in bets placed on Polymarket in August, as of Tuesday, a new record for the rapidly growing web3 prediction market. Much of the activity is still centered around U.S. politics, with nearly 90% of all bets placed on the platform in the past week being related to the upcoming presidential election.

$361 million

The estimated value of El Salvador’s 5,852 BTC, as of Friday afternoon. The Central American country, which made bitcoin legal tender in 2021, has been buying a full bitcoin every day since March 16 this year.

172,300 

The number of “crypto millionaires” (or people with crypto holdings worth more than $1 million) according to a new survey from investment firm Henley & Partners — a 95% increase from 2023.

TOKEN TRIVIA

What percent of Americans, ages 18 to 34, own crypto?

Find the answer below.

Trivia Answer